IE8 is here! Some of you may be ignoring that exclamation mark thinking, “Great, now I have 3 IE’s to cross browser test”. Or do you? Since IE8 officially launched at 9am Pacific time this morning I spent the next 3 hours upgrading Vista with the 90 or so upgrades it asked me to do before I could finally install IE8. I then proceeded to ask myself that same question every web developer out there is thinking, “How big of a pain in the ass is this IE going to be”. So I did a few test and benchmarks just to see how well IE8 stacks up against my other 2 favorite browsers, Safari 4 and Firefox 3.0.
Note: I’m aware that its unfair to test a beta version of Safari, an official release of IE8, and an official release of Firefox. However, I justify this by saying when you try to download any 3 of these browsers these are the default options for downloading.
Acid 2 Test
The first test is the popular Acid 2 Test
The first bit of good news is that all 3 pass the Acid 2 Test.
Acid 3 Test
The next test is the new Acid 3 Test.
Below are screenshots of the individual results for the Acid 3 Test.
Safari 4 Acid 3
[/caption]
IE 8 Acid 3
The results here were pretty predictable, Safari 4 passes with flying colors, Firefox is a little behind, and IE 8 comes dead last.
CSS Selectors
I used the CSS3.info CSS Selector Test for this one.
Below are the individual results from the CSS Selectors Test.
Safari 4 CSS Selectors
[/caption]
IE 8 CSS Selectors
Yet again another predictable conclusion. Safari 4 passes all of them, Firefox 3 comes behind, and IE 8 finishes dead last. What really hurts is how far back IE is on CSS selectors. I can see this becoming a pain for years to come.
Javascript Benchmarks
I used the Sunspider test for the Javascript Benchmarks.
Below are the individual results from the Sunspider Javascript Benchmarks.
Safari 4 Benchmarks
[/caption]
IE 8 Benchmarks
I do believe that with Firefox 3.1 (errr, 3.5) We should see Firefox pull back within range, however as of now We start to see that IE 8 isn’t doing so bad. In fact its very promising that its JScript engine could run some very powerful web applications now and in the near future.
Website Optimization Performance Handling
To me the king of web optimization is Steve Souders. You may know him as the creator of Yslow. He’s come up with this very handy way of testing how well browsers handle web optimization techniques. For end users this means the browser shows you your pages faster and for developers its a way of finding out if our optimization efforts will do any good. I’ve run his UA profiler on all 3 browsers. Here are the results.
Below are the individual results from Steve Souder’s UA Profiler Tests.
Safari 4 UA Profiler
[/caption]
IE 8 UA Profiler
IE 8 seems to stand up on its own in this one. However, there doesn’t really seem to be any clear winner. Each browser has its strength and weaknesses.
Well it does seem that IE 8 is an improvement and even managed to stay even or beat the current Firefox 3.0 browser. However, as I think many of us anticipated, there’s not going to be parades in IE 8′s honor.
What kind of conclusions can you draw from these tests, if any?
Update 3/20/09
These original tests were meant to see what IE 8 is doing compared to the current releases of its competitors, but there seems to be a concern that Firefox 3.0 isn’t a fair competitor to Safari 4. So if you’re curious to see how well IE 8 is doing against the latest beta versions of Safari (a.k.a Webkit) and Firefox I’ve compiled some new charts below to show the results of the same tests.
Note: I didn’t include the results of the Acid 2 test again since all 3 browsers passed it completely.
Below are the individual results of the Sunspider Javascript Benchmarks
Webkit
[/caption]IE 8
As expected Firefox comes right back into the game with its latest beta. In fact its a clear winner of the UA Profiler test.
Last 5 posts by steve
- Frontend Optimization, pt. 5 - June 12th, 2010
- Frontend Optimization, pt. 4 - June 11th, 2010
- Frontend Optimization, pt.3 - May 27th, 2010
- Frontend Optimization, pt.2 - May 20th, 2010
- Frontend Optimization, pt.1 - May 10th, 2010
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At least IE8 is getting better! But it’s ridiculous to receive an email form Microsoft last night saying that IE8 is the fastest browser in the market. We just need to look at benchmarks like yours to realize that they are lying. The problems is the massive users don’t know this details and informations and they will keep using it. Thanks God we still have two excellent browser: Safari and Firefox. Thanks!!
Absolutely ludicrous to compare Safari 4 and Firefox 3. Your reasoning isn’t justification.
Safari 4 is the best that Apple has. Firefox isn’t the best that Mozilla has. Just because Apple chooses to use its default audience as its testers, doesn’t give them an advantage (irresponsible of Apple).
In my Sunspider tests IE8 and FF3.0 seem to perform similarly (8-9sec, safari beats both of course with amazing 1,6sec)… anyway, I prefer dromaeo.com, js+dom is this what really matters to end users
[...] IE8 Browser Showdown With Safari 4 and Firefox 3 [en] [...]
How come my Safari only gets 98 points on Acid 3? I have the latest version on an XP pro sp3.
Absolutely absurd to be comparing Safari 4 a BETA browser to non-beta browsers. IE has no current beta so I suppose that’s okay, but not throwing the Firefox 3.1 beta in instead of 3.0 is just unfair. The latest Safari 3 only gets a 75 on Acid3 and it’s javascript is FAR slower.
Firefox 3.1b3 gets a 93 on Acid3 and even newer builds score higher. It’s javascript is also much faster.
You’re giving too much credit to Safari and not nearly enough to Firefox.
PS: IE still really sucks a lot.
I agree with the various points that its unfair, I made that clarification in the article, and I also noted that when a typical user tries to download either Firefox, IE, or Safari, these versions are the current default. I will be adding on Firefox 3.1 today to these tests since there seems to be quite the demand to not just see how the current releases of all these browsers are doing, but also to test the latest beta versions. So perhaps I’ll use the latest nightly build of Webkit as well.
Good tests and research. But, still it would be fair to test none-beta browsers, all the comments above are very true!
You should test Opera too, it’s doing very well on almost all this tests.
Interesting comparison. I was a little disappointed with some of the Firefox results though.
[...] a preocupar más de los estándares? Quizás sea un poco pronto para criticarlo, pero mirando la entrada comparativa que han publicado en Billupsdesing lo cierto es que el navegador de los chicos de Redmon no sale muy bien [...]
[...] una revisión exhaustiva aquí obtenida de [...]
[...] a preocupar más de los estándares? Quizás sea un poco pronto para criticarlo, pero mirando la entrada comparativa que han publicado en Billupsdesing lo cierto es que el navegador de los chicos de Redmon no sale muy bien [...]
Maybe toss up IE7 vs IE8 also in that mix? It would be nice to see if IE8 is better or heck, did it maybe slow down from IE7.
[...] a preocupar más de los estándares? Quizás sea un poco pronto para criticarlo, pero mirando la entrada comparativa que han publicado en Billupsdesing lo cierto es que el navegador de los chicos de Redmon no sale muy bien [...]
I just watched the “Browser Speed” video on IE8′s website. It’s total buttkus, but the average user doesn’t know that. Testing JS+DOM is absolutely necessary to really get an idea of the speed of the browser. So far as I can tell, Chrome’s V8 engine is wiping the floor in that aspect. As a web designer, I like to test my sites in every browser I can get my hands on. The most frustrating thing for me is the lack of proper CSS and DOM support in IE! I almost always have to write a ton of CSS hacks just to get things to look the same in IE as it does in EVERY other browser. And IE’s new “compatibility” mode just encourages poor programming factors! If they just fixed their browser they wouldn’t have to have button! I get so frustrated with Microsoft’s business practices. Misleading consumers and creating inferior products intentionally should be illegal in my book. Just had to rant somewhere
My friend on Orkut shared this link with me and I’m not dissapointed that I came here.
[...] score, the better it is equipped to handle today’s web interactions. While still lagging behind Safari and Firefox, IE8 seems to be catching [...]
Thanks for adding the FF3 beta vs Safari4 beta comparison – that makes more sense to me.
It’s a shame Opera wasn’t included, but I guess the graphs look cleaner with only three data sources. I really like the simplicity of this blog layout, so I’ll forgive you.
[...] IE8 Browser Showdown With Safari 4 and Firefox 3 | The Stairwell [...]
I know that google’s chrome is still at its beta, and its based on the same structure of safari, but I ran all these tests on chrome and it scored really high comparing to other browsers, specially when it comes to Javascript Benchmarks…If a product at its beta and at its first version can compete head to head with market leaders, then its really a good product and it will over pass other easily…
[...] vergelijken met de (helaas nog steeds gebruikte) IE6. Andere tests en vergelijkingsproeven kan je hier [...]
Very good testing benchmarks but you didnt include Chrome. I guess it isnt as important as I thought
Working with multiple browsers is like shooting photos, taking into account future compositing. IE is not that much different when you plan your projects properly.
Great now just bench mark these and see how chrome does, im sure it will come out on top having run most the tests already myself
Interesting posts here.. thanks for sharing so much in your blog.. Greets, Alphonso Dewees